Every ship needs a ballast – when the seas get rocky, there needs to be a centre of gravity pulling it back so it can sail confidently ahead.

What do both of you hold on to when the seas get rough?

I feel deeply for all us – all of us who choose to embark on a deep and lasting relationship.

For the first time in history, every couple is on their own – to discover how to build a healthy relationship, and to forge their own vision of how and why to be together.

Two people seeking to create a life together at this time, face a unique set of challenges. Never before have couples had so little help or guidance from elders, society or spirituality. Most of the old social and economic rationales for marriage as a lifelong relationship have broken down. For the first time in history, relationships between men and women lack clear guidelines, supportive family networks, a spiritual context, and a compelling social meaning.

Until the last few generations, the form and function of the male/female relationship – and marriage in particular – were carefully advised by family, society and religion. Every couple used to have a set of defined roles within an extended family, which in turn had a place in a close-knit community where people shared similar social, moral, and spiritual values and customs. Marriage provided a stabilizing influence in the community; it supported the social order – and society supported it in turn – if a marriage was unhappy, community pressure held it together.

Only in the last few generations has this situation changed.

Now that marriage has lost most of its traditional supports, and couples are increasingly cut off from family, community, and widely shared values, there are few convincing extrinsic reasons for a man and a woman to sustain life’s journey together.

Only the intrinsic quality of their personal connection can keep them going.

When you experience conflict, anger or trouble in your relationship, what do you do?

When trust or intimacy have broken down, and you’re ignoring each other, what do you do?

What’s troubling you in your relationship won’t go away on its own, and it won’t help to ignore it or suppress it either.

What does help is awareness, understanding, learning and un-learning – so that new paths and patterns can emerge from your relationship and important changes can happen in your relationship for the better.

Towards a New Vision of Relationship

Traditional marriage achieved stability by serving a prescribed societal function – modern relationships are based on feeling rather than function – so, it’s no wonder relationships are so unstable at this time in history.

Romantic feelings, while inspiring, are notoriously fickle and ever-changing. Long-term relationships need a new foundation – beyond social duty and romantic intensity – a new vision that will help couples find new ground and inspiration.

We need to recognize and welcome the opportunity that our intimate relationships provide – to awaken each of us to our true nature. The truth of who we really are.

If our relationships are to flourish, they need to reflect and promote who we really are, beyond any limited image of ourselves created by family, society, or our own minds. Our relationships need to be based on the whole of who we are, rather than any single form, function or feeling.

This is a challenge, because it means undertaking a journey together, in search of our deepest nature – and our connection with someone we love can be the best vehicle for that journey. When we approach our relationship in this way, intimacy becomes a path – an unfolding process of personal development.

This leaves us to begin to contemplate marriage as a conscious relationship – men and women, as whole human beings, apart from roles and stereotypes – a new departure for couples.

We have developed a number of habitual personality patterns that cloud our awareness, distort our feelings, and restrict our capacity to open to life and to love.

We originally fashioned our personality patterns to shield us from pain, but now they have become a dead weight keeping us from living as fully as we could.

When we connect deeply with another person, our heart naturally opens toward a whole new world of possibilities – while also, simultaneously making us aware of the ways that we are stuck. Our relationship bring us up against our most painful unresolved emotional conflicts, stirring up our worst fears, neuroses, and frustrations in each moment.

Relationships are invitations to open ourselves to the sacred play of the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, and the larger truths born out of intimate contact with the great mystery of life itself.

There’s a road map back to living a fully connected life for every couple who has suffered in isolation.

Discover the joy of being fully alive in your relationship through a deeper level of authentic, vulnerable connection.

Sessions for individuals & couples are available in-person or by Skype – and allow you to open your heart, let go, access true freedom, and feel truly alive in your life and relationships again.

It takes courage to step forward, reach out and open a new door.

Let’s walk the path together.

love Kim, xo.

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl